Education Journal 2015; 4(1): 37-43 Published online February 11, 2015 (http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/edu) doi: 10.11648/j.edu.20150401.18 ISSN: 2327-2600 (Print); ISSN: 2327-2619 (Online) Word Order of Persian and English: A Processing-Based Analysis Mehri Izadi 1, * , Maryam Rahimi 2 1 Department of English Language, Chabahar Maritime University, Chabahar, Iran 2 Department of English Language and Literature, University of Sistan & Balouchestan, Zahedan, Iran Email address: izadimi@yahoo.com (M. Izadi), maryam.rahimi@gmail.com (M. Rahimi) To cite this article: Mehri Izadi, Maryam Rahimi. Word Order of Persian and English: A Processing-Based Analysis. Education Journal. Vol. 4, No. 1, 2015, pp. 37-43. doi: 10.11648/j.edu.20150401.18 Abstract: Word order refers to analyzing the order of languages syntactic constituent to find out the areas of their similarities and differences. In the present study, we intend to elaborate Persian and English word order mainly based on Dryer (1992) and Dabir Moghaddam (2001). Our research material includes examples driven from 26 orders. We studied these orders in order to present a clearer picture of correlations and diversities between the two languages. Research findings reveal that although Persian is an SOV language and English has the SVO order, these languages represent similarities in half of the 26 orders provided. As to differences, they are different in the application of adposition, noun and relative clause, want and verb, content verb and auxiliary, question particle and sentence, adverbial subordinator and clause, etc. Keywords: Word Order, Persian Language, English Language, Contrastive Study 1. Introduction Word order is the analysis of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and that how different languages would employ different orders (Tallerman, 2005). The discrepancies and similarities between orders in different syntactic domains are a matter of interest for linguists (Tallerman, 2005). Some languages are relatively inflexible in their word order. Thus, in order to convey grammatical information, their speakers have to rely on the order of constituents. Other languages are more flexible and convey grammatical information via inflection, case marking, or other markers. This shows that most languages have a preferred word order and use it most frequently than other word orders (Johnson, 2008). Based on Tallerman (2005) there are 6 possible constituent word orders for the world languages: 1. Subject + verb + object (i.e. SVO): including English, the Romance languages, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Chinese and Swahili, 2. Subject + object + verb (SOV): the prototypical Japanese, Mongolian, Basque, Turkish, Korean, the Indo-Aryan languages, the Dravidian languages, Persian, Latin and Quechua, 3. Verb + subject + object (VSO): Classical Arabic, the Insular Celtic languages, and Hawaiian, 4. Verb + object + subject (VOS): Fijian and Malagasy, 5. Object + subject + verb (OSV): Xavante and Warao, 6. Object + verb + subject (OVS): Hixkaryana. Many languages of the world are either SVO or SOV. The third significant word order which is much smaller than the two is VSO word order. The three remaining orders are rare. English is mostly an SVO language and has a strict word order in which words can be presented in sentences. This order is exemplified below: The researchers sent their manuscripts to the journal (Wallwork, 2011: 21). Here, we have subject (the researcher), verb (sent), direct object (their manuscripts) and indirect object (to the journal). If these parts of speech appear in a different word order, it would be difficult for the readers to get the meaning fully. Thus, the key is to keep these elements as close to each other as possible (ibid.). Whereas English sentences normally put the subject at the beginning of sentences, followed by the predicate, there are sentences in which the verbs come initially, such as imperative sentences like: Beware of dog! Here, we do not have any subject. In these cases English examples still conform to English grammar, and do not allow random placement of subject, verb and object. This means that word order is crucial in English language because it has a fixed word order (Gill, 2010). By adding an indirect object